Ultimate Guide To Storing & Backing Up Manuscripts For Writers

As a writer, I understand that irrational fear that we all have about losing our latest manuscript. In fact, some of us might have firsthand experience of our computer breaking down and our manuscript being gone forever. If it’s me, I would totally break down. I put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears into writing my draft. If it’s gone, I’ll feel that all of my efforts have gone down the drain. Plus, I might not be able to reproduce the same content.

To prevent such a scenario from happening, we should always back up our precious drafts. Today, I’ll share different ways of how you can save your manuscripts as well as my own personal experience and tips.

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Ask Yourself These Questions

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

What is your purpose?

Are you backing up your drafts to prevent loss due to computer failure, accidental deletion etc.? Or are you backing up to keep track of your writing progress?

The first thing you need to keep in mind is why you are even doing this in the first place. This will help guide you in determining the features that you need and the frequency of backing up your manuscripts.

Do you want a new storage tool? Or leverage on existing tools?

Decide on whether you want a new storage tool to store all your writing documents or simply use an existing tool.

If you’re getting a new tool, you might need to consider budget like how much are you willing to spend on this new tool. If you’re using an existing tool, you need to consider the limits and restrictions. For example, Google Drive has a storage limit and this amount differs depending on your plan.

Photo by Kaboompics on Pexels

1. External Hard Drive

External hard drives serve as a great backup device.

You can easily transfer data and documents between computers with this portable device, making it convenient for backups and data transfer. It’s also cost-effective because it provides high storage capacity at relatively lower prices. Most importantly, you have full control over your data and you don’t have to rely on a third-party service for backups or storage.

Personally, I don’t really use this for my drafts. However, I do have an external hard drive for my personal albums to store all my precious photographs and videos that capture meaningful moments.

2. Google Drive

With most people having a Google account, saving your manuscripts in Google Drive is an obvious choice.

If you have a Google Workspace subscription, that’s even better! Even the most basic plan offers 30 GB of storage and that’s a lot. If you don’t have Google Workspace, don’t worry. You still have 15 GB of free storage. Your drafts, which are probably Word documents, don’t take up a lot of space so this should be sufficient.

Cloud storage offers numerous benefits, including convenient access from anywhere and any device. With Google Drive, you can collaborate with people in real-time and easily share files or invite users to comment or edit.

This is my preferred way to back up my manuscripts. I set a reminder to save my manuscript monthly and I also save my manuscript at the end of each writing day. Besides my manuscripts, I also save my plot and character notes here. There is literally a lot of space (but that’s because I have Google Workspace subscription too).

Another tip, I strongly recommend that you save copies of your drafts. See how I back up my draft every month? I don’t simply delete the previous month and replace with the latest month. I save them as Draft Jan 2025 and Draft Feb 2025. This way, if you need to prove copyright in the future, you can use these drafts as evidence. They’re time-stamped evidence and also original documents.

3. Email

Another way to back up your drafts is to email yourself.

Similar to abovementioned, these emails that contain your drafts are time-stamped evidence. Moreover, everyone is sure to have an email account so this shouldn’t cost you anything extra.

The issue, however, is that you probably need to set up filters to sort these emails into your manuscript folder. You wouldn’t want to accidentally delete these emails.

4. Other Tools

There are countless tools in the market that you can use to store your manuscripts, including Dropbox, USB flash drives and more.

Do look into your existing tools and see if you can use any of them.

For instance, I have a paid Evernote subscription. Thus, I actually create my plot and character notes in this note-taking app then save these PDFs in Google Drive.

Bonus Tip: Consider These Factors

Cost

Like I mentioned, you need to consider cost. Cloud storage often has monthly subscription fees while external hard drives are typically one-time purchases.

Capacity

Consider the amount of data you need to back up. For documents, it’s probably not a lot. Images and videos, however, take up more space. Do choose a storage solution that can accommodate the amount you need.

Ease Of Use

Some backup methods are simpler to set up and use than others. Try and test the various solutions and see which is easiest for you.

Photo by NikolayFrolochkin on Pixabay

Bonus Tip: You Can Never Have Too Many Backup Manuscripts

It’s completely okay to back up your manuscripts on various tools: Google Drive, external hard drives etc.

In fact, it’s better to back up your manuscripts everywhere than only backing up once.

If your only backup method fails for whatever reason, you’ll be in deep trouble because you don’t have a copy of your manuscript. So it’s better to be safe than sorry!

Bonus Tip: Be Consistent In Backing Up Your Manuscripts

The key thing is that you need to be consistent in backing up your manuscripts.

Make it a habit. Make it a routine. Back up your manuscripts regularly. It could be monthly or weekly (or daily like me). Just ensure that you do it because you never know when you’ll need it.

Source: TheSparkArt via Etsy

Now It’s Your Turn

How do you back up your drafts? Do you have any tips that you’ll like to share with fellow writers?

Let’s never lose our work again~!